Our Most Popular Posts of 2018

Our top five most-read stories in 2018 somehow didn’t include any about Matt Rosendale, though I suspect by the sheer number of posts about the failed Senate candidate and faux rancher, you all had to have been paying some attention. Our most-read pieces include a thorough mocking of a white supremacist, the news that Greg Gianforte is afraid of his constituents, a takedown of a racist Senate campaign and the video of Corey Stapleton telling Montana voters to invalidate their ballots the Secretary tried so hard to suppress.

While we didn’t make the rather ambitious goal for readership we set for 2018, this year was once again the busiest year in the site’s history, with just under 600,000 views visitors checking our collection of almost 700 posts this year.

And while we didn’t really track views until 2012, sometime in November, we crossed the threshold of two million views since 2013.

Thank you all for continuing to read and even contribute to the maintenance of the site and its work.

In the last two statewide elections in Montana, absentee ballots accounted for almost two-thirds of all the ballots cast, a number that is sure to grow as voters opt for the convenience of voting from their own homes. Unfortunately, Montana has a Secretary of State so ill-equipped for the task of his job that he can’t even get his self-promoting videos produced and aired at our expense correct.

I assume that this ad is the opening salvo of the last phases of the Fagg campaign: to depict the former Judge as someone who was tough on criminals while relying on coded racist imagery and language to appeal to the hooded base of the Montana GOP. It’s incredibly depressing that Russ Fagg thinks sinking to this desperate low will save a flailing campaign, but it’s even more depressing to imagine that someone this racist was a judge for two decades.

Richard Spencer is having a rough go lately. GoDaddy pulled his racist website from the web, Facebook took down his pages that he used to promote his pathetic agenda and fleece gullible racists out of their money, the lawyer who has been defending him quit not only Spencer but the movement, and he’s been reduced, like all good Nazis, to begging other people to give him money.

That last point became abundantly clear this weekend when Spencer tried to buy a $4.25 shot of bourbon at the Great Northern Bar in Whitefish and his credit card was declined. Spencer, who told Mother Jones in 2017, that he was “going to navigate the world as it is, and I’m not going to be a pauper” apparently lacks the resources to buy himself even a mediocre shot of bourbon.

The threat here isn’t to Greg Gianforte’s security; it’s to our representative democracy. Shouldn’t Montanans choose a Congressional representative who is willing to engage, discuss, and debate with people with whom s/he might have disagreements?

In what comes as no surprise to Montanans Ryan Zinke has once again been caught with his hand in the cookie jar misusing taxpayer dollars for expensive flights. In an expose published in Newsweek based on information gathered through Freedom of Information Act requests it has come to light that this time it wasn’t just any taxpayer dollars, these funds were specifically set aside for fighting wildfires. Even for Secretary Zinke this is a new low.

If you appreciate an independent voice holding Montana politicians accountable and informing voters, and you can throw a few dollars a month our way, we would certainly appreciate it.

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Don Pogreba

Don Pogreba is an eighteen-year teacher of English, former debate coach, and loyal, if often sad, fan of the San Diego Padres and Portland Timbers. He spends far too many hours of his life working at school and on his small business, Big Sky Debate.
His work has appeared in Politico and Rewire.
In the past few years, travel has become a priority, whether it's a road trip to some little town in Montana or a museum of culture in Ísafjörður, Iceland.